Guinea Pigs Care Sheet

Guinea Pigs are a cute animal that make great noises when they are happy.  They are very curious, highly intelligent and are a very social animal. This means they need to be housed with more than one, ideally of the same sex. Single Guinea Pigs can become very depressed and even die of loneliness. Human contact is not the same even if you are planning on spending lots of time with your Guinea Pigs. Guinea pigs are usually very shy to begin but will form a close bond with the humans who look after them once trust is built.

Life Span:

Guinea Pigs can live between 5 -7 years.

Enclosure:

Guinea Pigs need a safe and secure place to sleep at night but also plenty of exercise during the day. This needs to be supervised to ensure no harm comes to them. A fenced in area or secure run is perfect. You can also get harnesses for them to take them for a walk outside on the grass.

Providing tunnels, toys and hiding places will entertain them when you are not around.

An outdoor hutch or inside house is great for sleeping but is not efficient housing all the time.

Bedding:

Bedding straw provides the warmth and comfort at the bottom of their enclosure. We recommend placing newspaper down first to make cleaning the cage easier as this can be rolled up.

Cleaning out the bedding straw and enclosure when needed is crucial and a good deep clean at least once a week is recommended.

Food:

We feed our Guinea Pigs Topflite rabbit and guinea pig mix, fresh grass, hay, cabbage, silver beat, spinach, raw carrots, apples and frozen mixed vegetables at this stage. They love dandelions as a treat, the flowers as well as the plant.

Fresh Meadow or Timothy Hay should make up around 80% of your rabbit's daily diet.

Fresh water should always be available, the pet drink bottles work perfectly for this. This needs to be changed daily.

Important:

It is not recommended to house Guinea Pigs and Rabbits together as they require different care, and their diets are different. Guinea Pigs behave and communicate in very different ways to Rabbits, so when keeping them together they won't understand each other's behaviour.

To see all products needed for your Guinea Pigs click here Small Animals